Deadlocked 5 (5 page)

The chaos of the first year was hard to fathom now, after the world had settled into its morose decay. I'd been taught how to handle the apocalypse, and even I was nearly swept up in the madness. The mission that my father left behind for me is what helped keep me sane. I had a plan, and it was the only thing that mattered. He'd left me gear, maps, and enough food to carry me through for several weeks. He even charted the path to my first destination in the panhandle of Oklahoma where I tracked down the second person on my list.

My father's maps, and the path he drew for my first journey, seemed almost nonsensical. I was sent along a winding trek that avoided all major highways and seemed to curve around areas for no apparent reason. It wasn't until after I'd made it west that I realized what he'd done. The eastern United States was dotted with nuclear power plants, and he'd designed my escape route to avoid them by a 200 mile radius whenever possible. I was lucky he had. I never witnessed the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown, but I'd met hundreds who had. From what I knew, the majority of the eastern half of the United States was a desolate wasteland. I remember one old man, his face bulbous with tumors and his throat swollen to the point that his voice came out as a squeak, begging me to heed his warning. He said, "Watch for the red pines. When you see the red pines, run the other way."

I didn't learn what he meant until many years later. One of my hobbies has become locating libraries in any town that I travel through. If a library is still standing, which fewer and fewer of them are, I stop and camp there while reading everything I have time
for. During one of those stops I read about how radiation damages chlorophyll, causing pine trees to grow with red needles. The thought of that cancer laden old man warning me about the red trees still haunts me.

Wyoming was thankfully free of any red pines, and was one of the few states that didn't have a single nuclear reactor in it. Unfortunately, it seemed to house a strain of the zombie virus that everyone assumed had died out. The original virus had a bad habit of rearing its ugly head in post-apocalyptic towns, but once mankind settled on a nomadic lifestyle, the virus seemed to disappear.

I leaned down from the second floor and looked for any sign of the zombie. I could see his foot around the corner, in the kitchen. He was on his back and wasn't moving. "Hello." I spoke quickly and regretted it almost immediately. There was no need to hasten a discovery. It was only my own impetuousness that inspired me to call out. I knew that something had made a sound, but it could've been from a raider just as easily as our zombie experiment. Luckily, no one seemed to hear me.

I checked my Glock and then grabbed my axe. My knife was still on the floor below since there was never any desperate need for me to risk retrieving it after the attack. It would be the first thing I grabbed once I got down.

I lowered the rope slowly over the edge so the end didn't smack on the floor. The nylon creaked against the wood as I lowered myself down. I was as quiet as possible, and hadn't bothered putting on my boots in hopes that my socks would make less sound as I walked through the home.

I was overjoyed to finally have my knife back. It was an essential part of my gear, and its absence had set me on edge for the past three days. I set my axe down, happy to be holding a weapon again rather than a tool, and prepared to move into the kitchen to check on the fallen corpse.

It gasped and twitched as I turned the corner. The fucker was still alive.

His stomach was twice the size it was three days ago, and the sores around his eyes had grown much worse. Flies buzzed around the zombie's mouth and I pressed my hand over my paper mask as the smell became overwhelming. The creature scratched at the floor and swiveled its hips as if trying to do everything in its power to come my way, but his body was beyond hope.

Then I heard a muffled pop, as if one of the creature's bones had broken or an organ exploded, and suddenly his stomach deflated. He looked stunned and opened his mouth as if to speak, but only a hiss escaped. The release of air turned to a gurgle and then white foam rose up over his tongue and dripped off his lower lip. Something inside the zombie had burst, and his stomach's contents were pushing out of his throat. His head drooped to the side and his eyes stopped staring at me as he died for a second time. This confirmed my suspicion that he had succumbed to the same disease that caused the original outbreak.

"Well fuck me."

Now that the experiment was over, and the zombie was dead, it was safe to move to a new home. All I needed was a view of the road, and any of the houses on this street afforded me that. There was no good reason to stay within a block of this bloated, stinking corpse.

I climbed back up and told Stubs the good news, but as I did I grew more curious about the events that led up to our meeting.
The puppy was certainly a pet that would be eaten within a month if left in the wild, and the corpse downstairs had been infected by a virus that was known to speed decay. Zombies created by that virus rarely lived longer than a week or two. How was it possible that these two ended up here at nearly the same time? It couldn't be a coincidence.

"Where did you come from?" I asked Stubs, wishing he could provide an easy answer that would explain everything.

He sensed my desire to communicate and barked. I wanted to ignore my curiosity and focus on tracking down the trade caravan that used the road out front, but every time I looked at Stubs I was reminded that something was amiss.

It had taken a full day before the puppy would consider eating the salted beef that I offered him. When he did, he licked at it reluctantly and tentatively nibbled at the corners. A feral dog would devour a piece of meat like this, no matter how salty it was or how much mold had colored its edges. And his scat had changed since we'd been together. At first, I was tossing large lumps of
well-formed excrement off the edge of our second floor abode, but now his bowel movements had become loose as his body adjusted to a change in diet; another clue that someone had been caring for him.

A gust of wind rattled the rafters and whipped through our room. I glanced out over the plains of Wyoming and saw the dark clouds far in the distance that were headed our way. Lighting flashed from within the cloud and several seconds later we felt the thunder rattle our home. Most animals seek shelter in the rain, which makes it one of my favorite times to travel.

It's never advantageous to walk around with soaking wet clothes and gear, which is why most survivors mimic wild animals by hiding at the first sign of inclement weather. However, in my years alone on the road I'd learned to take advantage of thunderstorms. There was rarely a better time to seek out food or equipment than when you can be nearly guaranteed that most other predators and scavengers are hiding. The trick was to bring as little gear as possible and wear clothes that you could easily dry later.

"Stubs, how do you feel about taking a little trip?"

Stubs was too frightened of the storm to pay attention to me. His eyes were wider than normal, which was a comical sight, and he stood rigid as he stared out at the approaching clouds. Each flash of lighting caused him to quiver. The thunder sent him spinning nervously before looking up at me, and then back out at the storm, as if wondering why I wasn't scared as well.

"I want to find out where you came from."

I disrobed and dug out a set of athletic gear that I'd pilfered from a Sports Authority recently. The shorts were thin and made of 100% polyester, which is why no one else had bothered to scavenge them before me. Not many people wanted to waste time collecting fabric that wasn't good for keeping warm, but I found that having an outfit like this was useful for trips out in the rain. I latched on a pair of sandals that had straps on the ankle to keep them from slipping off, and then put on my camouflage poncho. My outfit was a clashing disaster, but fashion isn't something people in a post apocalypse world really give a shit about.

I holstered my Glock, sheathed my knife, and carried Stubs down with me as we headed out into the windy prairie. He abhorred the idea of leaving the house with the storm on the horizon, and writhed in my arm as I trudged through the weeds.

I set Stubs down on the side of the road as I dragged a spike strip across the pavement. Earlier in the week, when I first took up residence in this small town, I found the strip in a police station and kept it here. When I slept, or had to leave the house, I would come here and pull the strip across the road to make sure the caravan didn't pass without me seeing it. I had a hotwired car on the other side of the house, and I planned on waiting for the caravan to pass and then following it from a safe distance. I didn't want to risk alerting anyone that I was here by blowing their tires, but I'd rather have that happen then let them pass unnoticed.

Stubs sniffed at the accordion metal spikes, then lifted his leg and peed on them. I laughed as he stepped away from his puddle and then kicked his back legs at it, scraping his nails on the asphalt as if trying to bury the urine. He was the only dog I'd ever met that tried to kick up dirt to cover his excrement, and seeing his tiny frame attempt such a silly act never ceased to humor me. He looked like a miniature bull preparing to charge.

"Come on, goof ball."

I slapped my thigh to signal him to follow and he quickly caught up, his nails clicking on the asphalt until we moved off to the side of the road. I looked back at the dilapidated home where we'd been staying and tried to gauge where the dogs that chased Stubs had first come across. The Juniper tree that had become home to three or four bird's nests was close to where the dogs first appeared, and I moved over to it in search of tracks.

The Juniper's blue berries littered the ground, shaken free by the multitude of birds that lived there. Birds clucked and fluttered above but didn't take flight as I snuck beneath them, kneeling as I searched for tracks. The tree leaned out to the side, as if the wind had influenced its growth.

Thunder crashed over the plains and Stubs whimpered at the sound. The storm was coming, and its rain would swiftly wash away the tracks I was hoping to find. Usually dog packs followed a routine path, making tracking them easy simply by looking for the indentations carved into the layer of overgrowth in a patch of weeds like this. But Stubs had enticed the pack into chasing him away from their standard route.

I grabbed the lowest branch of the Juniper tree and shook it, causing the tree's needles to rain down and the flock of birds to angrily take flight. Then I pulled myself up while Stubs stayed below, watching as I climbed as high as the brittle tree could support me. I pulled out my binoculars and gazed out over the plains in search of any sign of civilization.

To the south, toward the home that I'd been staying in, a small town had once thrived. The neighborhood was quaint, with the majority of homes being of the ranch variety with single floors, and there was a large lot that had once housed trailer homes - all of which had long ago been demolished and scattered. A new development area had been started on the north side of the road, but the apoca
lypse halted the project in mid-construction. Some of the rusted, broken vehicles still stood along the north side of the road, tied in place by the weeds and vines that now snaked their way through the mechanical giants. Further on, a mile or so down the slight slope that led north, was an industrial zone.

Industrial plants were usually a sign of nearby water sources since they were frequently built on the banks of a river or lake, but I never trusted them. I'd seen too many containment units explode in my time to trust the water that flowed nearby. Still though, Stubs had come from the north, and it didn't look like there was anything else out that way except for the industrial park.

The storm was moving over the park as I watched, and the telltale grey streaks beneath the clouds warned me that if I went that way, I was going to get wet.

Stubs barked up at me as I jumped down. "Come on, bud. We're going to take a little trip." I scooped him up, not wanting to be slowed by his stubby legs, and carried him under my arm as I headed north.

Rain has a distinct smell, especially when it's falling on thirsty plants, and the plains filled with the vibrant scent long before a single drop fell on us. In the early days after the apocalypse, rain didn't always bring such a healthy rebirth. For the first few years it was foolish to stand in the rain because there was a good chance it was acidic. Despite what some of the survivors believed, acid rain doesn't come from green clouds and stink of sulfur; it looks and smells just like regular rain, but it can peel the paint off houses and crumble statues if enough of it falls. I traveled through hundreds of miles of farms decimated by acid rain, the vegetation blackened with rot after just a single storm. In those early days, one of the most useful things in my gear was a battery operated Oakton pH tester. 

After the first few years, the acid rain ceased, at least in the areas I traversed. No one knew what the world was like in the fallout regions of the eastern states.

The trip down to the industrial area was a steeper slope than I'd anticipated. It made the hike easier, but the walk back would be strenuous as the rain slickened the dirt. We continued on and I noticed a surprising change in the field ahead. The grass was shorter than expected and the ground looked mangled, as if a herd of some sort had passed through recently. I glanced behind me, back toward our temporary home, and saw that the downgrading hill blocked my view. We were heading down into a valley, which made me wonder why Stubs chose such a difficult path to flee. If he'd taken nearly any other path, he would've been running on flatland, but heading south forced him to climb the hill to the road, a feat his tiny legs must've struggled to achieve.